


I Never Gave You Aught

by DaLaRi



Category: Hamlet - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 13:45:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16138475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaLaRi/pseuds/DaLaRi
Summary: A missing scene, fie on't.





	I Never Gave You Aught

**Author's Note:**

> This was largely prompted by the Andrew Scott 2017 production of Hamlet. It's wildly good, and I'll enclose a link to watch it at the end. Also notable influences are the 2009 Davit Tennant production, whose rendition of the first soliloquy will stay with me forever.  
> I've never seen a production of Hamlet that was gay enough, and I've seen Hamlet at Elsinore. This is the scene Horatio should have had.

HORATIO:

How many times have princely tears  
Watered the curséd ground on which I lie a’weeping?  
How many times has the dread prince  
Whose cold face I hold between my hands even now,  
And whose body rests within so kingly and untimely a bed  
That scarce I can bear to think on it  
Thrown himself to these floors to fie on the world,  
One that now has so unjustly blasted him?  
He was not fit for death yet--  
O God! would you so act upon Apollo?  
Upon Poseidon, to cast brimstone at them?  
Would that I were Lot’s wife that my tears  
Could sever me from this curséd lasting promise,  
That my eyes could deliver me to my sweet good lord  
And cast me like a statue where I stand.  
Would that I saw him still, even an apparition--  
The extasy that gripped him at the sight of his father  
Would grip my form in excess of a thousandfold.  
Would that I saw him as I knew him, thought and leaping speech  
Making quick and graceful a quiet form  
Not, O God, slack as untimely shrouds between these hands  
That must bear the ungodly coldness of him still!  
That I could have held him thus, and lost him so!  
\---  
Young Fortinbras, before all of Denmark, calls him a soldier  
And how quickly are the ignoble masses led astray  
From the quiet, noble, beautiful prince they--  
O God! O God! I refute the silence I am bound to!  
How can they so abandon the prince that I so loved!  
He was outside my star, within the curséd promontory of Elsinore,  
This rank encloséd garden that is Denmark, here he was beyond my reach.  
But we did not meet in Denmark, and in Wittenberg there was sable earth  
Into which we sowed the seeds of a philosophy.  
Must I be cursed to tell his story, but hold my tongue?  
Must I tell of how he died? Recount the deaths of others,  
And yet leave out the ways in which my heart,  
Tethered to him with cupid’s burning cords, bends itself to agony?  
Apollo cast Patroclus to his death, and in doing so killed Achilles,  
But Achilles held Hyacinth as he died, and wept and raged.  
Does Apollo then know no mercy for the lovers?  
In Hamlet’s still form there is no answer, there is no message.  
There is only a silence where still there should be voice.  
\--  
How many times did Hamlet beat his chest upon these floors  
And curse his fate? Why now am I too bound  
For a same thrice-damnéd term to do the same?  
Denmark’s a prison, he said as much  
And bent himself on escape. He nearly succeeded!  
I held him to me, and yet Death’s cruel hand ripped him from me  
First to Denmark, then again to Hades, the one to which i would fain follow  
Armed either with lute or Charon's fare the one from which i am forbidden.  
My sweet lord, why bid me tell your story and forget my unvoiced heart?  
Must I, like Ophelia and the fair Laertes, gather rue from the fields?  
Madness holds no respite for me, it’s the living that’s the torment.  
I would I could escape, if not from this form, at least from Denmark,  
But yet the call of Wittenberg is as distant to me as the sea.  
What pleasures it once held now carry the pall of death.  
I chased what pleasures I had from Wittenberg to Denmark, and herein I lost both.  
O Apollo, have I not suffered enough?  
The fall of Narcissus is not half so sad a tale, and yet i sprout no petals  
Hamlet had half the faults of Hercules, and yet new stars do not decorate the night.  
Is there providence in the fall of a sparrow? What auguries were there to defy?  
Were I able, I’d cast my guts out from myself in divination, but all I’d know is this:  
While he still lived, I held him. He was who I knew was mine.  
Death beheld us both, and between us picked the sweeter.  
He left me, the dregs, the poison i’ the cup.

**Author's Note:**

> The Andrew Scott Hamlet: https://openload.co/f/YXMpVCzCPtE#


End file.
